“Well, it’s news to me. So Molly knows, too? How come no one ever told me?”
Theresa and Paul exchanged weary glances. Finally Paul shrugged and said, “I don’t know, you weren’t around much. And you and Dad were so tight. You were always his favorite,” he said pointedly. “He went on and on about how you did your own thing, didn’t care what anybody thought. He envied you. Anyway, it’s not exactly the kind of thing you just mention over Christmas dinner.”
“Christ almighty,” Jack exploded. “I was in Kingfield, not Siberia. It’s two hours away! You could’ve picked up the fucking phone.”
Paul’s voice rose to meet his brother’s.
“Yeah? And what would you’ve done, Jack? Huh? What? Blasted home for the day and straightened everybody out? Anyway, I didn’t, okay? I didn’t. I had a wife and kids to take care of, clients, Mum and Dad on my hands, and unbelievable as this may be, you and your … priorities … were not always top of mind.” He paused and seemed to consider withdrawing, but instead he pushed on.
“You’re a smart boy, Jacko. You could’ve figured it out if you wanted to. Or if you’d given a sweet shit.” Alice watched in horror as Paul’s lawyerly cool shattered and years of resentment and frustration splintered his meticulous veneer of self-possession. He stood, but instead of rising along with him, his voice fell to a menacing baritone, sarcasm dripping from every syllable. He was pointing down at his brother with two fingers and stabbing the air between them.
“You were too busy helicopter skiing and delivering sailboats and tending to your many responsibilities behind the bar to worry about what was going on with Mum or Dad, or me, or anyone but yourself. Not when Alice’s drinking got completely out of hand, not when we found out Dad had Alzheimer’s, not when she got cancer. Never.”
“Oh no, oh no, Paul, please stop. Stop it now before it can’t be fixed, please stop it, please,” Alice beseeched as her panicked thoughts tore at her consciousness. The anger built in the room beneath her, and she felt as though the smoke tendrils were pulling her in a dozen directions at once. The boys’ rage and anguish washed over her; it was unbearable. “This isn’t how it was supposed to be. All those years, just so you wouldn’t see how things were, so no one would.”
Paul continued, clearly unable to stop the torrent. “So don’t you think, not for one—fucking—second, you ungrateful little prick, don’t you even think about giving me a hard time about how I chose to handle the shit show that landed in my lap. We don’t all have the luxury of staying seventeen forever,” he said.
Alice was stunned to hear Paul swear, and the shock of seeing him lose control seemed to freeze everyone in place. Molly was standing behind Theresa in the doorway, peeking around her sister’s shoulder like a child who’d walked in on her parents in the middle of a drunken brawl. Once again Theresa had withdrawn behind the impassive, expressionless facade. Above them, Alice felt as if she were being wrenched apart by the rapidly darkening, tacky strands that threatened to consume her. The angrier her children became, the thicker the smoke turned, the more violently it shook her.
Now Jack, too, was on his feet, and he leaned over the desk until his face was inches from his brother’s. “You bet your ass it’s wonderful, Paul. Every day’s a blissful fucking Soma holiday—it’s all blow jobs and rainbows and unicorns for Jack. That what you think?” he shouted.
His brother said nothing, his teeth so tightly clenched his jaw trembled.
“Seventeen? Yeah? So what?” Jack continued. “I’ll never be you, Paul, never be Mr. Perfect, Mr. Georgetown, with a perfect wife, perfect kids, perfect life. Shit, I barely graduated on the five-year plan and the best I could manage was a sociology degree, for Christ’s sake. That make you happy, buddy? No? Well, Mum and Dad didn’t like it much either.”
Jack’s words echoed in the stillness of the room. Just inches apart, the two men stared at each other like cats preparing to spring, each daring the other to blink. No one moved, no one spoke. Above it all, their mother hovered, thrashing in the vapory tethers as her sons seethed below.
The overhead light clicked on, chasing away the gloom. Molly stood with her hand on the switch plate, then pushed past her sister. Her voice cut the silence.
“That’s enough. Idiots. Sit down now, the both of you.” She gestured for her brothers to sit. Alice half expected her daughter to pull out a microphone, so complete was the transformation to her TV self. She’d always been a great one for the headlong charge, and Alice was relieved to see Molly return to her more familiar persona.
“Look, Dad was easy to love, when he was around. Mum, not so much. But she’s gone and he might as well be, and we’re all we’ve got.
“So yes, Jack,” she continued, “I knew he fooled around, but you know, that was between the two of them and … God, or the universe or whatever. Daddy was a skirt chaser; Mum was a frustrated, selfish alcoholic who probably never should have had children in the first place. Fine. If you want to shove ’em into little boxes with tidy labels, have at it.”
And there it was. After all the years of protecting them and pretending, Alice reflected, she hadn’t fooled anyone.
Theresa moved from the doorway to the fireplace. Jack and Paul stood down, slumping into their chairs and breathing deeply, almost in unison. With each exhale, Alice saw the smoke lighten and felt the pulling and tearing ease.
Theresa spoke first. “Jacko, remember when that big lummox of a girl—what was her name, Standish, Stanley?—whatever, anyway remember how she’d wait for you after school every day and beat you up? What were you in, third grade, fourth?”
“Misty Stanley, yeah, I remember. She’d wait outside the schoolyard and follow me home, then thump me. I couldn’t hit her because she was a girl. Plus she was a lot bigger than me. So what?”
“Didn’t you ever wonder why she stopped?” Theresa asked.
“I figured Dad took care of it,” he said with a shrug.
“Nope. Mum heard about it, but the principal said they couldn’t do anything because it was off school property, so she had your teacher keep you after school the next day, and she went looking for the kid. She told her if she ever so much as glanced in your direction again, she’d beat the hell out of her, then have Uncle George arrest her, and her father, Judge Byrne, would send her to reform school. Colie told me about it a few years ago.”
Alice recalled the incident. When she’d told Mike about it, he’d said only, “Jesus Christ, Alice, he’s getting his ass handed to him by a little girl. He needs to toughen up. I’m not going to interfere and make him more of a mama’s boy than he already is.”
What choice did she have but to take matters into her own hands? She wasn’t proud of threatening that unfortunate child, but she’d had no choice.
“Alice did that? To Manly Stanley? Well, fuck me. Alice could be tough, but it’s hard to imagine her threatening anyone with an ass-kicking.”
Alice wondered at his reaction. She’d done what any mother would have; surely he understood. Jack shook his head as if to clear it. “She was something else,” he said more to himself than the others.
Episodes like that, and there were plenty, had strained the marriage as much as the faithlessness and the lies and the whiskey-soaked nights. But what eventually broke it—years later—was the night Jack got arrested for underage drinking and hauled into the county jail in Fairleigh. Once again Mike had been no help, unreachable, probably screwing around while his son was being worked over in a holding cell. By then Alice’s uncle was long retired from the police department and in a nursing home, so she’d had to call her father to intervene, and while she waited for him to get the chief of police on the phone at two A.M., she’d sat on that bench and endured the sound of fists on bone and the smack of open palms striking her boy over and over again. When Jack had come home bruised and bloodied for “resisting arrest,” all Mike had to say was, “You ought to know better than to smart-ass a cop.”
If I had to point to the moment I
lost the last shred of feeling for my husband, that was it, Alice thought. I turned a blind eye to everything else, but there was no way to love him, or even like him, after that.
His voice back to its normal register, Paul said, “Remember when I got into Georgetown, but Dad and Grandpa were pushing me to go to BC just because they’d gone there? We were all sitting around the living room—Theresa, you were there—and Mum’d had a good few drinks. I didn’t even think she was listening. They were just banging on me about it, remember, T?”
Theresa nodded. She lifted her chin and pursed her lips in an expression the shocked Alice recognized immediately as her own, and perfectly mimicking her mother’s trilling, slightly sloppy, whiskey voice said, “LSAT, GUL, BCL … S-h-i-t! What goddamned difference does it make whether he goes to Georgetown or Boston or Whatsamatta U? It’s his life and Paul can do what he pleases. Now leave him alone. Conversation closed.”
Theresa was listing slightly, her elbow resting on the mantelpiece with her hand, palm up and shoulder height, holding a make-believe Virginia Slims cigarette between her elegantly splayed fingers just as Alice had all those years ago. With her other hand, she shook the empty thimble glass she still held as if it were a bell. “Now, Mike, be a dream man and get me a drink, won’t you please—just a halfsie.”
It was such a pitch-perfect impression of Alice in rare form that even Alice herself recognized it. I had no idea. She’s brilliant, really quite the actress. How is it I never knew?
Theresa’s siblings chuckled. Clearly they’d seen this before. “Oh Alice, what a piece of work. God, but she could be funny,” Molly said, wiping away the single tear that ran down her cheek. “I’m going to miss her.” The others looked down, no one spoke.
The oak-paneled room was quiet as Alice and her children huddled together, each lost in thought. Outside, the blue winter twilight surrendered to black. The stars began to flicker and the moon began to rise, first peeking over the harbor, then floating up past the rooftops of Bridge Point, and finally breaking through the spiderweb of barren branches to the night sky above.
The minutes ticked on, and Alice listened as her children shared stories and swapped reminiscences so that, one finger at a time, they let her go, and as they did, the smoky fetters loosened and untangled themselves. Alice lingered just long enough to gather up all the things she should have known, and with her last thought, she gave herself over to the smoke, blended with it, became it, wafting, whisper, wisp, gone.
TRINITY
The ghosts in Albert Edgecomb’s house don’t seem to notice the time and bang around at all hours. Lately they’ve been keeping Albert up at night: Mother rattling the kitchen pots, Uncle Hartwell stomping around the attic where he shot himself, and that homely red-haired girl in her bloody pinafore, just standing at the foot of Albert’s bed, picking her nose. At least she’s quiet. There are others, too, but these he either can’t identify or prefers not to think about. Albert used to roll over and cover his head with the pillow when it got noisy, but lately he’s started shouting at them to quiet down. Sometimes it works.
This day in July starts like every other, with the midsummer sun arriving on schedule, accompanied by the rooster’s bare-scrape alarm and the tease of cool air drifting in with the tide. Last night was particularly raucous, so Albert didn’t get much sleep. He squints against the glare, licks the salt that has accumulated on his lips, lumbers to his feet, and makes his bed. After he washes and dresses, he yells, “I’ve had about enough of your deviltry, so you’d best behave tonight and let me sleep.” Then he tromps down the narrow stairway, slightly sideways. It is important not to brush against the walls. If he does, he’ll have to go back up and start again from the top.
At the foot of the stairs, Albert pauses to look at the snapshot that sits next to a vase of blue plastic daisies on the TV he never watches anymore. “Good morning, Mother,” he says. In the picture, the newly married Myra Edgecomb shies away from the camera. There is a tangle of earth-clotted carrots overflowing the basket on her hip. Still slim behind her checkered apron, she is two months pregnant. “You’re there, Albert. I just didn’t know it yet,” she told him when he was a little boy. “Your father took that picture, so he was part of it, too.” This is Albert’s one family photo.
In the kitchen, Albert taps the water spigot three times with his right index finger before opening it to fill the kettle. He spoons equal parts Nescafé and sugar into his mug. Then he peels off three strips of bacon, puts them in the big black skillet, and lights the burner. When the bacon is just shy of burnt, he lines up the strips on a sheet of newspaper to drain and cracks two eggs into the pan. He flips them carefully so as not to splatter.
“Now close the flame and count. One Mississippi, two Mississippi…” Mother recites the numbers with Albert all the way to ten, which is when the eggs are done. Albert likes the ten-Mississippi eggs well enough, but it’s Mother’s voice that fills him up. He worries that if he switches to oatmeal like Doc Norden said, she might not come back. Or one of the others might take her place.
After breakfast he steps outside and surveys the plot of land his family has farmed for five generations. Across the road, on the shore of the reach, the tide is going, leaving the slabs of slick gray rock that lie halfway vertical to dry in the sun. Ellsworth schist, the stone is called. Albert remembers his mother telling him that, her finger tracing the wavy folds of waxy stone like sagging flesh (like his own flesh now) that had been heated and deformed, then pushed up through the ground by volcanoes millions of years ago. She’d read a library book about it before she married his father, long before Albert was born, but she’d remembered that and more, things about rocks and trees and clouds and birds, and she’d tell Albert about them at bedtime. He can’t remember everything she said, not even much of it, but he remembers the rocks like folds of old skin and his mother’s smooth face and her voice lulling him to sleep.
Albert breathes deep. The pink perfume from the beach roses curls into his nostrils and vines around the lingering smells of fatty bacon and lemon dish soap, then squeezes until they’re gone. Summer is Albert’s favorite season. Good things happen in summer: the ocean breeze is warm and sweet, the sun heats the earth and his garden grows, he wakes to birdsong every day, and even the cranky old chickens seem happy. Days like this, winter is less than a ghost, unreal, benign, a memory that can’t touch Albert, can’t harm him. In winter things die from the lonely cold, and even the house, already listing under the burden of time, moans with the weight of it. Albert nods his head three times to clear it, pushing thoughts of snow and ice and the sharp-toothed dark from his mind.
At the chicken coop, he fills the feeder and changes the water, then opens the door to let the hens out. He counts them as they hop down from their roosts. One two three, one two three, one two three. All nine present and accounted for in waltz time.
Wednesday is weeding day, so Albert steers his wheelbarrow over to the garden. His knee bones grumble as he crouches between the rows to clear out the interlopers and harvest his crop. By lunchtime he’s filled Mother’s basket with more pimply kirbys, yellow squash, and green peas than he’ll be able to eat all week. The pole beans and tomatoes aren’t ready, so he passes them by and dumps the weeds over the banking on the way back to the barn.
“What do you think, Mother? Run the extras over to Father Morrill?” he asks, knowing full well he should spend the afternoon replacing the hinges on the cellar hatch, scraping the barn doors, or taking care of any of the dozen other repairs that need his attention. When she doesn’t answer, he takes it as permission to go visiting and sets the basket in the truck bed, then he goes to the kitchen for a cucumber sandwich.
* * *
After lunch, Albert is walking to his truck when he feels a cool shadow, a bird passing overhead. He looks up at the mottled white underside and black wing tips of a red-tailed hawk ascending, something small and bloody writhing in its talons.
A second later the creature wi
ggles free and plummets to the lawn. Albert doesn’t really want to, but he approaches the bloody mess, a small rat, torn almost in half, barely alive, its black eyes bulging in panic and pain. Albert hates rats. The big ones get into the henhouse, break the eggs, and suck them dry. Sometimes they kill his birds. Once he found two chicks with their throats torn out, not even eaten, just mangled and left in the dirt.
It’s plain nothing can save the rat and he considers leaving it there, but it’s just a small one, probably never did any harm. Albert crosses the driveway to his truck and returns with the shovel from the emergency toolbox.
“The longer I wait, the more you suffer,” he says just before he closes his eyes and brings the blade down squarely on the quivering animal, ending its pain in one blow.
Albert raises the shovel and shakes the carcass off, then wipes the rat blood on the grass. He wonders if animals have souls and is thinking maybe he should say a prayer when his thoughts are interrupted.
“Getting pretty good at killing things, aren’t you, boy?” the voice snarls, then singsongs, “Pretty good, pretty good, pretty good.”
Albert closes his eyes so as not to see the raw red scrapes across Royal Edgecomb’s knuckles. He tries not to breathe in the stench of blood and liquor that always follows his father. His heart is slamming against his chest, his mouth bone-dry.
“Get out of here,” Albert shouts. “Get out, get out, get out!”
Usually the three-magic beats back the darkness and silences the voice along with its hateful ghost, but not this time.
“Who threw out my whiskey? If it was you, I’ll thrash you good,” his father growls.
Albert runs for the truck and clambers inside. He grinds the shift into reverse and tears out of the driveway. Halfway to town, he steers the truck into the lay-by and drops his head onto the steering wheel, breathing slowly in and out like Mother told him. When he has stopped shaking, he thanks the Lord three times, blesses himself, and continues down the road to church.
The Northern Reach Page 18